Mary Leolin Bowerman (January 25, 1908 – August 21, 2005) was an American botanist, co-author of The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California.

Mary Leolin Bowerman (January 25, 1908 – August 21, 2005) was an American botanist, co-author of The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California; Their Distribution and Association into Plant Communities, and the co-founder of Save Mount Diablo.

Barbara Ertter is Curator of Western North American Botany at the University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley.

Barbara Ertter and Mary Bowerman. This magnificent revision of Mary Bowerman's masterpiece lives up to the unsurpassed standards of her now-classic original and brings a tremendous wealth of new information about Mt. Diablo and its spectacular flora into sharp focus

Barbara Ertter and Mary Bowerman. Diablo and its spectacular flora into sharp focus.

In 1930, UC Berkeley botany student Mary Bowerman accepted a professor’s assignment to identify all the flowers on Mount Diablo. Little did I know 65 years ago that my senior project would become my life’s work, explained Bowerman, who died at her Lafayette home on August 21 at the age of 97. The senior project became a doctoral dissertation, under the guidance of renowned California botanist Willis Linn Jepson, and was finally published in 1944 as The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo, California. This authoritative classic was updated in 2002 by Bowerman and Barbara Ertter of UC Berkeley’s Jepson Herbarium.

Sacramento, California: California Native Plant Society, 2002. Paperbound, about 9 inches tall, 424 pages. Bibliography, glossary, index. Originally published in 1944, this is a fully revised, taxonomically updated edition. Includes a few black and white illustrations. Note that this is NOT a field guide, but a reference book for botanists.